


me, her, and the moon

by dramaturgicallycorrect



Series: all my favorite conversations [6]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/F, Girl Direction, early 20th century, end of the day au, implied period-typical racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 17:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5505944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramaturgicallycorrect/pseuds/dramaturgicallycorrect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I think I should go home,” Niall says. “You should really get on. Dance with those boys your mum wants you to dance with.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I only want to dance with you,” Zayn says, taking her hand and giving her a spin, watching her dress flair beautifully before she pulls her in tight. She holds Niall’s waist tight, and Niall curls into her, resting her head against her chest. They sway slowly to the muffled sounds of the big band and clutch each other for dear life. This is all Zayn needs, her girl and the moon and the stars. </i>
</p><p> </p><p>[Or Zayn invites Niall to her going away party, but neither of them want her to go away.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	me, her, and the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theamazingpeterparker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theamazingpeterparker/gifts).



> For the moon of my life, Amy, who requested Girl Direction Ziall. I hope you like this enough you want to fight me.
> 
> This is part of a series of Christmas present fics (...loosely) based on songs from Made in the AM.

Niall spins as soon as Zayn opens the door, showing herself off, and Zayn looks her up and down, pleased. The best saddle shoes she owns, which are the only saddle shoes she owns, adorn her feet and she seems to have managed to successfully barter her sister for a dress without holes in. She may have even brushed that long blonde hair of hers. Zayn feels very complemented by the gesture.

“You look beautiful,” Zayn says, her cheeks growing warm just looking at her.

“I look like a doll,” Niall retorts, and she swishes with mock formality past her into the house.

Zayn decides to let Niall’s slight slide. “They’re setting up right now, we should definitely hide.”

Niall grabs her hand and races with her up the stairs and into Zayn’s room like they have so many times before, like they may never do again.

In three days, Zayn will be on a ship to America to attend university in New York, and she’s never been so scared in her life. She supposes she should be grateful. Doniya has to marry for the good of the family business, so they’ve got someone to pass it onto. Zayn pities her and yet Doniya is too kind to envy Zayn’s freedom. Zayn has rarely been described as kind, and she figures this is part of the reason she doesn’t offer to trade places with Doniya. In some ways, the world is changing swiftly, and in other ways the world stands painfully still.

Zayn isn’t sure if she was smart enough to get into university, or if her father paid enough -- if the university couldn’t say no to his money even if it was the _wrong kind of money,_ if the university didn’t know where her family was from or the color of their skin. She still has to travel an ocean away to educate herself, an ocean away from everything she knows and everyone she loves.

Niall, she’ll be an ocean away from Niall, who watches her carefully as Zayn closes the bedroom door behind them.

“You should change into your dress,” Niall says. “Unless you plan to wear that smock, which is fine by me, if you’re asking. At long last I shall finally be the prettiest person in the room.” She holds a hand over her heart and looks hopefully over at Zayn.

“You’re always the prettiest person in the room,” Zayn says as she begins to unbutton her dress.

Niall’s face flushes red with the compliment and with the way her eyes follow Zayn’s fingers down the length of her dress. She moves slowly for Zayn and rests her hands over Zayn without touching, her eyes flicking up to check for permission though they have been intimate for months.

Zayn nods and Niall peels the dress off Zayn’s shoulders and trails her fingers down her arms as the dress falls to the floor. Her fingers tickle slowly down Zayn’s stomach until they curve out to grasp her waist. Zayn breathes heavily, stood vulnerable in just her undergarments, but tries to still her chest when Niall bends down to press a kiss over her heart.

“My mother,” Zayn starts.

Niall gives a breathy laugh and says darkly, “Yes, your mother.” She does move away, though.

Her mother, who purses her lips at the thought of Niall, who calls her a distraction, who thinks Zayn’s love is a disease that should be eradicated. Her mother, who finds university a waste of Zayn’s time and has instructed her to pursue an alternative course of study in America -- namely a husband. Her mother, who could burst in unannounced at any moment.

“Wait,” Niall says just as Zayn is about to roll her stockings on. She gently nudges at Zayn until she’s stumbling backwards onto her bed. Niall climbs up after her, settling over her legs.

“Niall,” Zayn warns.

“I need to,” she says, but she doesn’t move until Zayn murmurs an okay. She peels down Zayn’s knickers and sets her lips to Zayn’s right hip, just under the waistline. She sucks and bites and licks until a bruise starts to form. Zayn struggles to stay still under her ministrations, biting at the meatiest part of her hand to muffle the moans and shuddering exhales she can’t keep in.

“This belongs to me,” Niall says when she’s done and the bruise is good and bloomed. She runs her fingers lightly over her work. Zayn’s not sure if she means the spot on her hip or all of Zayn, but either way both are true. She turns a grin up to Zayn and says, “Now you can get dressed.”

Zayn dresses quickly, if not because she doesn’t trust Niall to keep her hands to herself. She would be in the same position, admittedly, if she were to see Niall undressed and willing. Zayn would devour her if she had the chance, but they’re running out of time.

She works herself into this massive flowing black monstrosity that her mother laid out for her, careful not to disturb her expertly pinned hair. Niall hums hungrily with approval when she sees it and Zayn throws a pillow at her. Niall spends the better part of an hour trying to distract Zayn, but Zayn wins out in the end.

Her bedroom door opens just as she’s sliding her shoes on. Zayn’s eyes flick to Niall, even though she knows Niall sits innocently across the room at her dressing table.

“Your guests are arriving. Please come downstairs,” her mother says, giving the two of them a hard look before leaving. As if they were Zayn’s guests, as if this was not an excuse to invite half the village over for a fete simply to impress them. Zayn doesn’t mind being her scapegoat if it means she gets to spend the night with Niall.

Niall’s face looks pale, but she gives Zayn an unconvincing smile when she notices Zayn watches her.

“We don't have to go,” Zayn says and Niall laughs at that. She jumps up from her chair and holds a hand out for Zayn, her fingers wiggling. Zayn grins and takes it.

Niall’s face falls as she looks around at the dark sweeping gowns of women milling around the foyer. “I didn’t know there was a color code,” she whispers, tugging at the skirt of her yellow dress.

“You’re perfect,” she says and grabs Niall’s hand for a swing. She never dances at these things, prefers to keep to the edges and politely decline her offers in favor of watching. But there’s always something about Niall that makes her want to move her feet. She dances Niall all the way into the hall where the band plays, swinging their arms to the horns.

They cackle and fall into each other at the edge of the dance floor, stopped up at the site of Zayn’s mother frowning down at them. Niall widens her eyes in mock fright over at Zayn as they straighten up and put serious looks on their faces.

“Zayn, I need you to be on your best behavior tonight,” she says.

“Yes, mum,” Zayn says, knowing that best behavior extends beyond not causing trouble with Niall. She already sees a few nervous boys standing with their mothers across the room. She’s not overly impressed by any of them.

She says yes to the first boy that approaches her, just to appease her mother, and his sweating hand takes hers and leads her onto the floor. He watches his feet more than he watches her as he attempts something that could only generously be called the Charleston, which is fine by Zayn. Every time he turns her, she scans the crowd for Niall. She finds Niall always watching, a hand to her mouth clearly covering her laughter. Zayn’s glad one of them is enjoying this.

She loses Niall halfway through her father’s speech. She didn’t even know there was going to be a speech, but she is ushered up to stand next to him before the band. He’s got his chest puffed, telling them all a daughter of his got into university in _America_. Like it was an achievement of Zayn’s and not a product of circumstance. She wishes her face didn’t burn every time her father patted her on the back.

She had kept close eye contact with Niall to ground herself when the attention was getting overwhelming, but now she can’t find her. Niall sticks out like a sore thumb in any crowd, partially because her dress is as bright as she is in this sea of drab formalwear, but mostly because Zayn loves her.

“Strike up the band!” her father calls when he’s finished his speech and sufficiently embarrassed Zayn, and they jump back in with a new Cole Porter tune. If Niall were here, she’d tell her all about Cole Porter and Niall would laugh and call her far too rich. Zayn would smile and kiss her and promise to take her to the theatre, even though Niall would never let her.

Zayn pushes her way through the crowd, throwing her best demure and apologetic smile to any boy who catches her to ask her to dance. She ascends the stairs to her bedroom, the sounds of the party dulling the further she moves away. The room is empty, but her window is open, a telltale sign.

She hitches her dress to a height unbecoming of a lady and climbs her way through the window. She scales the familiar path with some difficulty -- high heels are truly the worst shoes for climbing and her mother will be scandalized to see how she has scuffed them against the brick. She scales the sloped shingles until she can slide down onto the level part of the roof at the back of the house.

Niall stands there, a little close to the edge for Zayn’s comfort, and she glows by the lights of the streetlamps and the moon. She looks breathtaking as ever, though Zayn prefers her in her trousers. Niall wears the dress like a costume.

“Hey,” Zayn says, but gets nothing from her, like she didn’t hear. She rests a hand on Niall’s lower back when she’s close enough and repeats, “Hey.”

Niall jumps and her face turns red as she turns wide eyes to Zayn. “Sorry,” she says, smiling through her embarrassment. “It’s just sort of… suffocating down there.”

“That’s okay.” Zayn gets it -- it’s suffocating every day of her life, but it’s all she knows.

“But you found me,” Niall says and leans back into her. Zayn shifts and her hands wrap around her small waist easily to clasp lightly over her stomach. Niall rests her hands on top of Zayn’s where they belong.

“You like the moon.” Zayn likes to listen to Niall talk about the sky, tries her best to follow Niall’s fingers as she traces the constellations. Those are her favorite nights.

She presses a kiss to Niall’s neck and remembers the first time they stood like this, on a night just like this, staring up at the night sky as they often did. She had taken Zayn’s hand and guided it under the waistband of her trousers, showed her how to press her fingers into her heat as she held Zayn’s neck and gasped her approval. Zayn was scared, but trusting, because Niall teaches her things. And because that’s all Zayn ever wanted -- Niall’s approval.

“Do you know what I like about the moon?” Niall asks quietly. Zayn hums a yes into her skin.

“It’s the same, but somehow always changing. Predictable, but comforting. Goes away, but then it always comes back,” Niall explains, her voice growing thick. “It comes back, Zayn. And it’s the always same.”

“I am coming back,” Zayn says, lifting a hand to wipe a tear from Niall’s cheek.

“But will you be the same?” she asks, and Zayn doesn’t know how to answer that question.

“I will write to you, every day,” Zayn promises instead. “Twice a day. Three times a day. I’ll drop three sentences per page and post them all to you separately.”

“It’ll be a game,” she says, her voice growing light even though Zayn knows she doesn’t feel it, “which of your letters gets to me and when, which of your letters is lost to the sea.”

Zayn presses herself closer to Niall and lets her eyes drift shut as she inhales the perfume she sprayed on Niall before the party, just so Niall would smell like she belonged to Zayn. “I wish you could come with me. I could take you with me.”

“I don’t need to be looked after,” Niall says, shifting out of her arms. Zayn opens her eyes to find Niall looks fierce and confident, ready to argue, though Zayn’s never doubted her. “A lot of people feel that way about me, but I don’t. I’m not looking to be saved. It’s a good life I got.”

“I know,” Zayn says, because Niall hints at it without saying it often enough. Zayn’s never wanted that for her, to take her from the factory, to imply her family was lesser for their status. She’s only ever wanted to give Niall her love.

Niall’s good to be happy with she’s got, though she doesn’t have any more control over her life any more than Zayn has. She lives at the mercy of her father, who moved them from Ireland some years ago, but longs to return. Zayn’s just leaving first, really, and she wonders if Niall realizes it.

“What if you go somewhere?” she asks.

Niall shakes her head, her eyes going wide. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you come back and I’m not here.”

“I will find you, wherever you go.”

“I could make you a copy of my course. Where I’ll be and when. You could chart me like the stars,” she says, but she’s wrong. Nothing about their lives is constant like the stars, the moon, moving in dependable cycles. They’ll move apart from each other, they’ll go out of sight, but there’s no guarantee they’ll come back to the same places they were before.

“I think I should go home,” Niall says after minutes of silence. “You should really get on. Dance with those boys your mum wants you to dance with.”

“I only want to dance with you,” Zayn says, taking her hand and giving her a spin, watching her dress flair beautifully before she pulls her in tight. She holds Niall’s waist tight, and Niall curls into her, resting her head against her chest. They sway slowly to the muffled sounds of the big band and clutch each other for dear life. This is all Zayn needs, her girl and the moon and the stars.

“This is a dream, Zayn,” Niall whispers.

“It’s a good one,” Zayn says and tilts Niall’s head up to kiss her.

Niall slides her hands into Zayn’s hair, wrecking how carefully her mother pinned it up. Her lips move and her tongue licks until the kiss-bitten color of Zayn’s lips isn’t the product of a stain. They taste each other until they forget to breathe, until they forget that they need something other than each other in order to live.

“Still a dream,” Niall says when she pulls away and leaves Zayn colder than the summer night should allow. Thicker tears are threatening to run her makeup, but she doesn’t move to dab at them. “Good luck. Be safe. Come back to me.”

She presses up another quick kiss before she spins and runs for the path that will lead her back to Zayn’s window.

“I love you,” Zayn calls desperately, but Niall’s gone, deftly picking her way over the tiles until she disappears.

Zayn lets loose the sob that has set heavy in her chest as she tried to be strong for Niall. She stands, gasping, trying to compose herself before she attempts the climb back down to her room. It hurts more than she thought it would, seizing her lungs and shaking her hands, like Niall is a part of her that has been cruelly ripped out and she hasn’t been sewn back up.

She climbs back to her room, moving to the other window that faces the front of the house, and waits. Eventually Niall spills out of the house with the light from the foyer, and walks into the night with her arms clutched tight around her like she’s cold. She’s not cold, Zayn knows. She feels ripped apart too.

“Niall,” she calls, hoping her voice carries on the wind to her ears. She waits until Niall turns to look back at her. The moonlight illuminates Niall’s shining face as she smiles up at Zayn like the entire world doesn’t lay between them.

“I love you,” Zayn says, desperation clinging to every syllable. She means it with every inch of her body and soul.

“I love you too,” Niall answers, her voice echoing. She seals it with a kiss, her fingers extending toward Zayn like they’ll be able to touch her face.

Zayn doesn’t know what lies ahead of her. She supposes maybe she’ll learn things, see new things, experience new things. But there are some things about her that she doesn’t think will ever change. The most important of which is she wants Niall to be the one she comes home to at the end of the day. She’ll do whatever she needs to to make sure that happens.

\----

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! If you need me, I am [here.](http://wickershire.tumblr.com/post/135790412335/title-me-her-and-the-moon-rating-general)


End file.
